


The Second Letter

by Silex



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Hogwarts Era, Magical Dudley Dursley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 09:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15603144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: Not one, but two letters arrive at 4 Privet Drive, dragging up all sorts of memories that Petunia Dursley wishes that she'd been able to forget. It feels like history is repeating itself in an even more horrific way than she'd imagined and Vernon has no clue how to respond to something so unexpected.





	The Second Letter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prettysophist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettysophist/gifts).



> Thank you so much for asking for this scenario! I love the chance to write things like this and I sincerely hope that it meets your expectations!

The atmosphere in the house on 4 Privet Drive was positively manic.

Harry had retreated to his cupboard and was quite happy to stay there until things blew over, however long that took. The letters, whoever they’d been from, were a mystery to worry about later, once sanity returned. Even Dudley had stopped crying when he realized that it wasn’t going to do him any good and retreated to his room to sulk and wait out the chaos.

Unfortunately, it showed no sign of stopping any time soon.

Harry had thought that he’d gotten used to his aunt and uncle’s volatile tempers, but that was because their anger had always been aimed at him. He could handle that because he knew when they would stop. Hearing them yell at each other was terrifying because was something new, something he had no way of predicting. In as long as he could remember, his aunt and uncle had never had an actual fight. Now they were storming around the house, yelling and throwing things at each other. In the moments of silence where they stopped for breath or paused to look for something more to throw he could hear Dudley sobbing up in his room, genuine crying.

His cousin’s crying made it all the more frightening. Dudley knew the value of crocodile tears to get what he wanted and his parents always gave in, but now, with real tears, they showed no sign of relenting.

The whole world had been turned upside down, all by a pair of letters that had arrived that morning.

A thin, rumpled one in a rough, yellowy envelope for him and an equally odd looking, much thicker one addressed to Dudley. He’d brought them into the house, commenting that it was odd that both he and his cousin had gotten letters from seemingly the same person.

Aunt Petunia had looked at them and gone white as a sheet, her eyes taking on a distant, glassy look, as though she wasn’t sure whether to faint or be sick.

Uncle Vernon hadn’t wasted a second in ripping them from Harry’s hands and making as though to rip both letters in half.

What followed had sent both he and Dudley fleeing the kitchen.

Letting out a howl like a dying wolf, aunt Petunia had lunged across the table, scattering the dishes that Harry had yet to clear from breakfast, and grabbed the letters out of his hands.

“No you don’t!” She’d shrieked, “Not to my Dudley!”

Misunderstanding, Vernon had tried to take the envelopes from her, speaking in low, reassuring tones, “Don’t worry, we agreed that we’d stamp out this nonsense in the boy and we won’t let them infect Dudley with it either. No need to worry dear, we won’t let them take him away.”

The look Petunia gave him was like he’d slapped her across the face.

Clutching the letters to her chest she stepped back, the glassy look vanishing from her eyes, replaced by something harder.

“Please, just give them to me, we’ll throw them out and forget all about this rubbish,” he held out his hand.

Harry and Dudley exchanged a glance as Petunia stared at her husband.

“No.”

One syllable in a small, flat tone.

When Harry heard that tone he knew to retreat and nearly did so out of reflex. Hearing it aimed at his uncle was impossible, like waking up to see the sun rising in the west.

He and Dudley exchanged another look.

“It’s going to be fine,” uncle Vernon took a step forward and tried to take the letters from her, “We won’t let those freaks hurt our little boy.”

“But he will get hurt,” Petunia said quietly, “He’ll cry himself to sleep and spend years convincing himself that it’s all horrible and unnatural. At the start of every school year he’ll stand at the station, he might break his nose and chip three of his teeth running into the wall, trying to get onto the train, he’ll write dozens of letters, begging. Then come summer he’ll be so jealous of all the fun he never gets to have, the whole world that he’ll never get to be a part of.”

Her voice grew increasingly high and frantic as she went on.

“Calm down,” Vernon snapped, “None of that will happen. Where are you even getting these ideas?”

“He’ll lose interest in school,” she continued as though he hadn’t spoken, “Won’t make any friends, finally convince himself that he’s happy, that he’s glad he’s not a part of it, he’ll hate his parents, hate his family, move out and not look back, convince himself that they got what they deserved and hate himself for it. Not a day will go by where he won’t have to remind himself to be mad, that he’s right for feeling that way and that they’re the ones in the wrong.”

“No,” uncle Vernon’s voice dropped to a strained whisper, “We talked about what we’d do if this happened, when this happened.”

Petunia blinked, “Not to Dudley, we never talked about how to keep Dudley safe.”

“By pretending it never happened at all,” Vernon’s face grew flushed with anger, his temper starting to get the better of him.

There was something else in his expression though, something Harry had never seen before.

Fear.

Whatever was in those letters was something important, a mystery that would never be solved and gnaw at Harry for weeks to come, he was sure of it. Dudley clearly felt the same way and never having been on the receiving end of his parents’ anger, didn’t have the sense to be worried about anything other than what it was that he might be missing.

It looked like Petunia was about to relent, to hand the letters over to be destroyed and end the drama.

Dudley chose that moment to start his tantrum.

Throwing himself on the floor between his parents he began to scream that he wanted his letter, that they had no right to keep it from him. It was his and they had to give it to him now!

Petunia was immediately on her knees, smoothing his hair, wiping his tears away and handing him both letters.

Vernon snatched them from her, “Not my son! Not in my house!”

“He’s my son too!” She cried, smacking his hand.

Then the fight started, right there in the kitchen, with Dudley trapped between the two of them.

The letters were the first thing thrown, then the butter dish when Dudley didn’t stop crying and Petunia insisted that Vernon was frightening him.

Vernon snapped at her to calm down and then at Dudley to stop crying and act like a man, that he was going to Smeltings and that was final. What that had to do with anything was beyond Harry, further adding to the mystery.

Was there someone wanting to take him and his cousin away? Though he’d often fantasized about a mysterious other family, or the friends of his parents coming to rescue him he knew that it was all just daydreaming. Besides, why would they send a letter first?

And why would they send one to Dudley as well?

Unused to being told no, Dudley kept crying while Harry slowly backed out of the room and retreated to his cupboard safely out of harm’s way.

The first part of the fight was about Dudley, Petunia alternating between comforting him and yelling at Vernon to stop yelling at him while Vernon demanded that she stop acting hysterical.

At some point Dudley realized that his tears weren’t doing and good and stopped. There was a lull then, where it seemed like things were over and normalcy would return.

Then uncle Vernon said something about the letters and it started all over again.

Dudley finally caught on that it was a bad idea to stay in the same room as his parents when they were trying to get him to take a side in an argument where neither was clarifying what their side actually was.

During the brief lulls that followed Harry could hear him upstairs in his room, sobbing, real tears this time.

All the while his aunt and uncle raged at each other and the ‘freaks’ and their ‘rubbish school’, whoever they were and whatever that was. Harry noticed a trend though, as his uncle’s attacks grew more vicious his aunt started defending the mysterious ‘freaks’, insisting that Dudley should be allowed to choose if he wanted to go or not.

The argument progressed from the kitchen, to the front hall, back to the kitchen to throw things, to the living room, with a quick detour to the powder room to throw a soap dish and, by the sounds of it, rip the towel bar off the wall, up and down the stairs twice, before going back to the living room for an encore of furniture shoving.

Right now it was on its way back upstairs, heading to the bedroom since the furniture in the living room had all been overturned.

“Your sister fell in with that lot and look what happened to her!” Vernon thundered, “Do you want the same thing to happen to Dudley?”

It took Harry a moment to realize that his uncle was talking about his mother, which was strange since she’d died in a car crash, unless…

Had his aunt and uncle lied to him all these years and the letter to him had the truth in it? If so, why had his cousin gotten a letter as well, a much longer one judging by the weight of the envelope? Wasn’t he the one that deserved more in that case?

And again, why bring Dudley into it at all?

“Don’t you dare say that about my sister!” Aunt Petunia screamed.

“You’ve said it yourself!” Vernon yelled back.

“I’ve said it,” Petunia’s voice cracked, “But do you think I believed it? I kept telling myself that, trying to believe it, that she was dead and that it didn’t matter, but then her friends had to leave her boy with us.”

“That proves how bad they are,” Vernon cut in, “If they were her friends, if they had any scrap of decency, why would they have left the boy with us of all people?”

Behind the cupboard door Harry flinched, the fight had turned towards him and that never ended well.

Silence.

Was it over?

His aunt spoke quietly, enough so that he had to open the door a crack to hear.

“Are we bad parents?”

“What?” Vernon sputtered, confusion and anger fighting in his tone, “We sheltered the boy, kept a roof over his head, kept him fed, made sure he got a proper education, vowed to stamp out any trace of that…that horrid nonsense.”

Anger had clearly won.

“We agreed that we weren’t going to have a freak under our roof, one of _them_. With their, their things and what they do. And I’ll be damned if I let them try to make our son into one of them just so they can get the boy. Whether he likes it or not we’re going to raise him right! Whether you like it or not! I will not tolerate a freak like that under my roof.”

It was the wrong choice.

“You’re calling your own son a freak!”

“Petunia, I – that’s not, you know I’d never,” all fight seemed to leave his uncle, “Dudley is a good boy, he’ll grow up to be a fine young man and we need to protect him from –”

“Having a say in what he wants!”

Aunt Petunia had gotten her second wind and the fight went the rest of the way up the stairs and into the bedroom, the door slamming shut.

A bit more shouting, some crying and then it was all over by the crying, loud, wracking sobs from aunt Petunia while uncle Vernon stammered confused comfort.

It was over.

Harry sighed and slumped against the inside wall of his cupboard.

The stairs creaked with the sound of someone very bad at sneaking trying to be as quiet as possible.

He opened the door and Dudley froze.

“Don’t say anything or I’ll…” Dudley trailed off mid threat. The usual warning that he’d tell his parents would work against both of them in this case. It was uncharted territory to Dudley, to both of them.

“I won’t,” Harry opened the door a little wider.

Dudley nodded.

An uneasy truce between the two of them, brought on by the earlier chaos, one that Harry wanted to take advantage of.

Dudley went back to sneaking down the stairs, leaving Harry wondering if maybe he should sneak into the kitchen. With all the things that had been tossed around there was a good chance that he’d be able to sneak himself some pretty good snacks, like that whole box of cookies he’d heard thrown across the room.

“What are you doing?” He bit back a laugh as Dudley reached the bottom of the steps and looked both ways.

“I’m getting my letter,” Dudley said grimly, “I want to know what all the fuss was about.”

He was afraid, but didn’t have the sense to realize how strange things had gotten. Harry could almost sympathize with him.

Almost.

On the other hand he could entirely understand the curiosity about the letter.

It took a bit of looking to find them, with all the chaos.

Harry righted the table and chairs then carefully swept through shattered china. The box of cookies had landed on the counter and he took one, offered a second to Dudley.

His cousin took it and shoved the whole thing into his mouth, grabbed another, then snatched the box from him and spoke with his mouth full of crumbs, “I’ll tell mum that you’re sneaking cookies.”

Harry shrugged and continued the search.

He found his letter in the sink, soggy and ruined, but he opened it anyway.

Dudley hurried over to look over his shoulder, still eating cookies.

It was no good, the ink had all run, though the peculiar wax seal on the back was mostly intact, albeit cracked. It bore the image of a bird, a lion, what might have been a dog and a snake surrounding an ‘H’.

“H for Harry,” Dudley said quickly, “Mine’s still here somewhere. We’ve got to find it.”

They kept looking.

At some point during the search Dudley passed him the half empty box of cookies, telling him that they were almond and not terribly good, the closest to an offering of friendship that he could manage.

Or maybe it was a peace offering. Curiosity and fear had put them on the same side for the time being.

Harry eventually found Dudley’s letter on top of the refrigerator after pouring them both large glasses of milk to wash the cookies they’d eaten down.

He’d been cleaning the kitchen as they searched to make it easier to keep track of things, so by that point there was a clear spot beneath the table for them to sit and open the letter. It felt safer that way, like they were hiding.

Because they certainly weren’t supposed to be doing what they were doing.

Dudley tore the envelope open and unfolded the longest piece of paper Harry had ever seen. A second, smaller bit paper fluttered to the ground, but he ignored it for the time being.

The long letter was too fascinating to look away. The paper was a different color and texture than normal paper, much thicker. Parchment he decided, but it was what was on top that was fascinating, a full color version of the wax seal from his letter. What he’d thought to be a dog was actually a badger and the bird was a crow, or maybe a raven. The letter H in a shield between all four animals was the same, but it made more sense considering what was below.

_Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry_

_Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore_

_(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorcerer, Chief Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confederation of Wizards)_

Beneath the letterhead followed a long note in looping script. Dudley paused in his reading to look at Harry.

“Do you think this is a joke?”

Harry wanted to say yes because it was all so absurd, but then he thought of his aunt and uncle’s response, “Would a joke upset your parents that much?”

Actually, now that he thought about it, neither his aunt nor uncle had much of a sense of humor so it was quite possible that a joke _would_ upset them that much.

Dudley continued reading silently, his lips moving as he went over each word.

_Dear Mr. Dudley Dursely_

_I am writing to you personally to offer my most profound apologies. This letter should have been sent to you several weeks ago and it shames me that such a glaring oversight happened on my watch as Headmaster. I could attempt to explain away the why of this happening, but that it happened at all is unforgivable. Despite what should have been obvious, and has become so in hindsight, we failed to notice that there was not one, but two children in the Dursely household eligible to attend Hogwarts for their wizarding education. As soon as we noticed this we made haste to rectify our mistake and get a letter sent to you as swiftly as possible, given the need to send it through the Muggle post, which has undoubtedly created even greater delay. This is shameful and I sincerely apologize to both you and your family for our oversight._

_Consider this your official invitation into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry! It is my greatest pleasure that you as well as your cousin will have the opportunity to attend our school and I am looking forward to seeing you during the Sorting Ceremony._

_The term begins on the first of September and if you wish to attend please respond no later than July 31 st. The typical way is by owl, but to reduce confusion, you may simply address your response to myself, Head Master Albus Dumbledore, at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and send it at you would any other letter. We will be expecting your correspondence and will be able to see to it that it makes its way through the post to us. Minerva McGonagall has included a list of books and supplies that will be necessary for your classes. If for whatever reason, you are unable to acquire any of them due to circumstances, please say so in your response letter so that we may assist you._

_Please accept my humblest apologies and extend them to your mother. It is my hope that you and your family will forgive me for any distress that this has caused._

An even more elaborate and looping signature followed.

They both reread it twice more before Harry picked up the second piece of paper. It was, as the first letter had said, a list of school supplies, except it was like nothing Harry had ever seen before, cauldrons, a wand, books on magic, robes, potion supplies and permission to bring either an owl, a cat or a toad.

Dudley frowned, “It sounds like a joke.”

“I don’t think it is,” Harry thought about his own ruined letter, wondering why Dudley was so important as to get an apology for not getting one sooner. The whole situation had certainly upset aunt Petunia and uncle Vernon.

“I’m a wizard,” Dudley said slowly, as though trying the idea on for size.

“I got a letter too,” Harry reminded.

Dudley blinked at him, as though seeing him for the first time, “Do you think they’ll still make me go to Smeltings? Because if this is real I don’t want to. I want to learn magic! I can learn how to fly and turn you into a toad!”

When he put it that way Harry wasn’t so keen on the idea, but it made him wonder. He and Dudley were wizards, aunt Petunia had said something about her sister, his mother. Had his mother been a witch? All his life he’d felt like he hadn’t belonged and this explained so much, he was a wizard.

But so was Dudley.

He stared at his cousin.

It was a lot to take in.

A door opened upstairs.

Harry froze for an instant then bolted back to the cupboard, lay down on his bed and pretended to be asleep. All the while he listened intently.

Cautious footsteps, aunt Petunia making her way to Dudley’s room.

“Duddey-kins? Are you alright?” Her voice was hoarse, “We didn’t mean to scare you.”

A small noise of surprise followed when she discovered that Dudley wasn’t in his room.

Frantic steps down the stairs, through the downstairs and into the kitchen.

“Oh, Dudley, you’re such a good boy, cleaning the kitchen for us! Let’s go out and get you an ice cream for being such a good boy without being asked. We can do that while your father takes a nap.”

She sounded on the verge of tears.

The sounds of Dudley getting out from under the table, followed by a small gasp from aunt Petunia.

“Mum,” Dudley spoke in his best attempt at trying to sound mature, “I want an owl.”

“A what!” Came uncle Vernon’s outraged roar from upstairs, proving that he wasn’t actually asleep, “No son of mine is going to –”

“That’s enough,” aunt Petunia croaked, her throat too strained from all the earlier yelling to manage more than that, “Dudley’s old enough to decide for himself and if he wants to go I won’t let you stop him.”

“You!” the bed creaked as uncle Vernon sprang from it, “I thought we’d agreed!”

“That was when it was just the boy,” Petunia squeaked out, “This is different. This is our son and I won’t let him miss the chance that I never had!”

“Is that what this is about?” Uncle Vernon rushed down the stairs so fast that he tripped and fell the last few steps, then half ran, half stumbled into the kitchen.

“I want an owl!” Dudley demanded, giving up on sounding mature and falling back to his own standby of crocodile tears, “And to learn spells, and fly and do magic!”

“Now look what you’ve done,” Petunia’s angry cry was barely audible over Dudley’s sobbing.

A long, ominous silence followed from uncle Vernon, broken only by the occasional splutter as he thought of an idea, started to say something and then immediately rejected it.

“Fine,” came his response at long last, “If he’s going, the boy goes too so we can at least get some peace around here. Sort things out and…”

The crying immediately stopped as Dudley began to babble excitedly about all the things he hoped to do at Hogwarts.

Dudley was a wizard.

So was he.

And in September they’d both be going to school to learn magic.

It looked like his dream of getting away from his aunt and uncle was finally coming true. Yes, Dudley was coming along as well, so there was that, but still, the chance to get away and learn magic.

Tuning out Dudley’s enthusiastic commentary about all the things he hoped to learn at school, all the things he expected to do, Harry tried to figure out what he wanted from this opportunity.

First and foremost he wanted to avoid his cousin. Dudley was enough of a bully without magic and Harry didn’t want to think about what he could do with magic.

Secondly, and probably most importantly, maybe he’d have the chance to learn about his parents. If they were wizards they’d gone to the school so maybe there’d be something about them in old yearbooks, or maybe one of the professors had taught them.

More than magic, more than getting away, it was the chance to learn about his parents that excited him, the chance for so many questions to be answered.


End file.
